Until you fall it’s painless

Round 22, 2022
St Kilda 3.1, 4.2, 9.7, 9.12 (66)
Brisbane Lions 3.2, 7.6, 8.8, 12.9 (81)
Crowd: 22,211 at Docklands, Friday, August 12th at 7.50pm

We’ve been living dangerously since the bye. Not in the thrilling way of playing the brash, daring footy that had us busting games open and in the top four at the halfway point of the season. We’ve been living dangerously by playing stop-start, non-threatening, inoffensive footy. Getting pushed off the ball, outworked comprehensively, looking disinterested.

Three years ago it was a trip to Kardinia Park that ended Richo’s reign. Last week we left the Cattery still wondering whether the problem was the “kickers” or the “catchers”, and we also left sitting outside of the eight as Richmond comfortably accounted for Port. Our chances and our time were running out. Top four fancies Brisbane and Sydney to come, while those around is could enjoy much kinder draws. Subconsciously it became that time of year for winding down and reflecting. Sandringham’s season was officially over after their own two-point loss to the Cats, with their decline occurring in sync with the AFL side’s. The anticipation of Thursday night teams had gone. No one was smacking the door down. What’s the most exciting thing that can happen at selection? Hannebery plays and is subbed out again? Jones was named an emergency, and then the sub, again. He hasn’t quite made the impact this year since missing the early part of the season with personal reasons. I hope he’s ok. Sharman was back to being named in the forward line after the club put him at centre half back for the Cats. D-Mac had regressed back to “calf awareness”.

Meanwhile, Big Boy McEvoy retired the week after playing the 250^th game of a career that has seen him win two premierships and captain Hawthorn. His trade is a symbol of our recruiting and drafting in the post-Grand Finals/Seaford era never working out, no matter all of Pelchen’s grand plans. Nick Riewoldt pantsed the McEvoy decision on Best On Ground the week before (and keeping in mind he was at the club to see it all unfold). Perhaps the overall result had a lot to do with the development of player during the Richo era (we still don’t know if that’s changed). The week’s major news item was Patrick Cripps being suspended, and an appeal being rejected, and then a second appeal successful. Those still dreaming of the Saints snatching a September spot now had to worry about Cripps being free to play affecting the top eight permutations, and I was thinking about him lifting the Blues to a memorable win in one of the final two rounds while we barnstormed our way to two upsets over premiership contenders for nothing.

On AFL 360 Extra Nick and Joey talked about bringing effort and went with their hearts and tipped the Saints. Gerard’s word association on SEN for the Saints was “Show us what it means to you”. It decidedly hasn’t meant much since the bye. I listened to SEN on Friday afternoon before heading in and having dinner in the Quill Room. I tried to enjoy the anticipation of what might be the last St Kilda game this year with something on the line. Channel 7 released their broadcast introduction package during the afternoon. Perhaps for the final time in 2022, the Saints were in a highlights package that suggested we were relevant with the Geelongs and Melbournes and Collingwoods and Sydneys and Brisbanes and Fremantles and Richmonds of the footy world.

***

Every game since the bye has had some aspect of a mini-final to it, but this started in a haphazard way more befitting a dead rubber, despite the playing group and coaches forming a circle in the rooms for a pre-match heart-to-heart. Silky Wilkie, one of our two most reliable players all year misread the flight of a wayward Lions shot on goal and dropped what would have been on the full next to the behind post. Snags broke through with the first after Marshall finally cleared it out of the Lions’ forward 50, Long broke through with some good pressure and Snags decided to just turn and go for it from inside the centre square without barely a glance. The ball rolled through.

But the footy was going to live in the Lions’ front half for most of first two quarters, and only some good pressure and tackling on our part – and some misses from the Lions – kept us in it. Their talls were having a say early. We got caught napping with a Hipwood bullet pass to McCluggage on a good angle (he missed), while on the other side of the ground Daniher took a big mark on the wing and his kick found a high-leaping Charlie Cameron who went back and kicked the goal. From the centre bounce, Neale snatched it from the tap down and gave off to McCluggage who was away and goaled on the run. It would be the first of several goals they’d kick directly from a centre bounce. Moments as easy as those defied the magnitude of the consequences of a loss.

We could barely find our way out of their high press when we got the ball in defence and we were reduced to the toothless movement as seen in the worst of the pre-season and the last 10 weeks. If we weren’t bombing it on Max’s head trying to get it into the front half it was Dougal trying to spear a pass through defence that went straight to Mason Wood, only to be dropped off the chest. Marshall finally took a get-out mark which ended in King’s first behind of the night as he kicked it on his right instead of his left under pressure from close range.

The game was slowly wrestled back. Two goals came from throw-ins on centre wing. Lienert grabbed it out of the ruck and gave it to Ross, and the ball went through NWM, back to Lienert and to Windhager who sped away and under heat from Lachie Neale found Membrey in the pocket. The post-goal celebration led to the first of multiple push and shoves featuring Dayne Zorko. Then, as our tackle count ticked over to 28 courtesy of NWM, Ross harried the ball out, Mitchito led into it and turned on a dime into space, took a bounce and found Wood, who kicked the kind of raking goal that only left-footers can kick. We were in front.

But Brisbane won it out of the middle again. The Big O got down low and handballed off to McCluggage, who hit up a perfect pass to Hipwood on the lead (Sharman was in defence after all, and was trailing behind). Hipwood kicked the goal as the siren sounded, making it three of the last five quarters in which our opposition had kicked a goal with the last possession of the term.

***

A team that prided itself on blue-collar pressure and repeat efforts – which prompted Ross Lyon to tell Saints fans to get about earlier in the season – was about to get physical. Long barrelled through Daniel Rich at half-forward, and then Crouch copped Gardiner high on the wing as he kicked. It was unruly but it was about the temperature the game required. Crouch now had to deal with Payne, Prior and Coleman in the latest push and shove. It was nice to see Mitchito getting involved. Windhager got involved in the other spotfires that broke out during the game too. Lienert was mouthy as well.

But the problems with the footy in hand remained. Stop, start, going nowhere fast.

The second quarter was all about holding on and hoping the Lions didn’t completely blow the game open. Daniher rose in the pocket and snapped a goal. They were getting big returns from their talls. Again the game was hemmed into the Lions’ 50. Wood’s attempted exit was smothered, Berry and Neale pounced on it and McCarthy fended off Sinclair, marked, and kicked another.

A Sharman spoil and follow-up should have yielded a valuable goal on the rebound and against the run of play, but Snags decided to kick it over King’s head instead of handballing inboard to Butler streaming into 50. Brisbane immediately took the footy around the other side of the field; Rayner gave a taste of things to come with a strong mark on the wing, Bailey was on and drove it forward and it had circled its way back to Sharman, who almost held onto it but the ball spilled out and Cameron found Hipwood for an easy goal. Hipwood lined up a few moments later and a flaccid two-on-two on the goal line was won by McStay. The margin was 26 points. It was the bad old days of the Watters and Richo eras (did the Richo era ever end?) with every opposition forward entry looking dangerous.

***

A rare venture forward found Seb who was smart enough to pinpoint a kick laterally on the 50-metre arc. Wood stood up again for a second week with a long-range goal when we really needed one. But this was looking more like the Lions’ chance for a percentage boost in their race for a top two spot.

Would it be too much to ask that we could do exactly what the Lions’ opposition over the past two weeks did in the second half? Brisbane has given up a 40-point lead to the Tigers, and then looked like they’d returned to their best for three quarters last week, getting out to a 57-point lead at three-quarter time before nearly shitting it (much like we did in Round 12 of 1997, getting out to a 57-point lead at the final change – almost the same scoreline – against the Blues at Waverley before almost giving the whole thing up).

During the week on AFL 360 Extra Nick said the team needed to “go down swinging”. After yet another half of footy of being unsure how to move it, it was going be fascinating in the least to see what they tried to do after having all of the half-time break to talk about it. Snags spent the half-time break concocting something else altogether, marking on the 50 and drawing the arsiest 50-metre penalty known to science by baiting Zorko into chasing Lienert running past with a feigned handball. Lienert and Zak Jones tried getting stuck into Zorko, reluctantly drawing former St Kilda supporter Jarryd Lyons into the fray.

Again, the Lions got one immediately out of the middle – this time Rayner had the class to bomb a goal on the run from 55 metres. The margin was a precarious 23 points. The Lions didn’t have it all their way – Windhager was in the throes of another career-building performance restricting Lachie Neale to just 16 touches while getting 21 himself, levelling the midfield battle, although Neale still good enough to get involved in goal-scoring chains. But we had Jack Steele kept to just 13 touches, and most importantly the Lions were ruthless in getting the ball back and putting it into a dangerous spot.

We’ve made a habit of third-quarter bursts this year, with different end results. In Round 1, we were 35 points down in the third and hit the front early in the last. Six goals in Perth in Round 2 flipped the Freo game our way. We stormed over the top of Richmond after trailing by 25 a week later; then managed a 28-2 third term against GWS to bring the game onto our terms. We kicked six goals in a row against the Cats after being down by 22. We’d also booted five goals in a row against the Bombers to draw level. Our season was going to need one more added to the list, and then some.

We had a period of holding the ball in our 50 through a series Max King-in-the-ruck throw-ins and stoppages, but we needed reward for effort. It was Mason Wood again, living up to his early-career billing, who broke through. Daniel Rich cleared the area with a shallow kick; Wood was at the fall and got his skates on, baulked Lyons on 50 and his kick floated through. Something had indeed been said at half-time. The switch had been flicked. There was movement. There was space. Kickers and catchers were briefly united. Snags got it on the wing and sent it long with Wood one-on-one the target; he dropped the mark but recovered quickest, got up, baulked one and hit up NWM who moved it on to Membrey just a few metres away.

But things were about to take a devastatingly curious turn. Max had had a shot from nearly 50 earlier in the quarter that you might think would have been a lot-less pressure-filled for him given his track record closer to the sticks, and now here he was taking a huge grab in front of goal in a pack of six from a Windhager kick. The crowd was getting into the game. This St Kilda ploy looked familiar. But Max went back and missed from 25 metres. He’d gone to 0.3. It was about to be revealed that his confidence was shot. Matt said when he was lining up he was a zero per cent chance of kicking it, so perhaps parts of the crowd were already realising what was happening. Zak Jones then punched a short kick to Membrey on a sharp angle from 40 metres out – a shot I absolutely trusted more than Max King in front; Membrey kicked it. We had the run and we’d taken the Lions out of their comfort zone. Brisbane are the highest scoring team in the competition, and their games average more than 181 total points this year. They were stuck on eight goals.

We hit the front a few moments later. Gardiner tried cutting through the middle to McCluggage but we were awake to it. NWM chopped it off, Ross gave it off to Butler, who had been largely anonymous, but here he put in a great run around Starcevich, took a bounce and hit Wood on the lead. Wood kicked his fourth.

We’d now kicked four in a row. Six of the last seven. And it was going to be our last goal for the game.

***

The end of the third quarter was the time to really put a gap between us and the Lions. Premiership quarter and all that. We didn’t yet have them on the ropes, but we would if we kept landing our punches. “Go down swinging”. Lachie Neale was getting frustrated under Windhager’s close checking and gave away a 50-metre penalty to Hill, who found Membrey with a short pass. Membrey, reliable and a leader, went back and missed. Sinclair got the ball back at high half-forward and as he wound up King took a soft dive after contact with Harris Andrews off the ball and was given another shot from 25 out on next to no angle. Matt, immediately, again said he had a zero per cent chance of kicking it. Max leant back on the kick and in that moment a new type of crowd reaction noise dropped. Two chances to go up by beyond a goal in the last 100 seconds of the quarter had been missed by both spearheads. Just take one of them and the game has a different complexion.

You get swept up in the moment. Just like the penultimate game of last year against the Cats, the exhaustion and resignation of several weeks of playing out the clock on another disappointing season gives way to sudden pang of desperation. Wait, no, I want this. It’s still there, it’s still live. I want it.

Swamp reminded us during the week that we’ve offered 60 opposition players the honour of winning that week’s Rising Star nominations, by far the most in the competition. We decided to run a little with that theme on Friday, rolling out the carpet for Cam Rayner to announce himself as the Dustin Martin/Jordan de Goey-style match-winner he’d promised to be when he was taken with Pick 1 in 2017. Starcevich and the Big O were too strong at a bounce in the middle after we’d spent some time forward; Lienert fresh-aired a marking attempt on the defensive 50 and then went to ground, Hipwood swept it away targeting McStay. Rayner was at the fall, split Hunter Clark and Sinclair and quickly and cleanly snapped around the body. Yet again Brisbane went straight of the middle; McInerny worked off Marshall, out to Zorko, and nearly everyone got drawn to the fall of the chaos ball at the front of Daniher, but Hipwood was the one who got to it and Rayner had held his position the whole time. The Lions, suddenly, were out by more than a kick.

Who wants to win you the match? Who wants the ball in their hands? Steele, our captain, found the ball on his own from a turnover in the middle and kicked it to the advantage of a Brisbane defender. Lienert cruised through the middle as we kept looking to move the footy quickly and hit up Max on the lead to steady things Max might have broken new Murmurs McKenzie decibels territory as he lined up. Maybe this time the distance of this would take some of the pressure off after the last couple of shots. He spun the ball around in his hands, leant back on the kick and missed to the right.

Rich took the kick in and hit Zorko, who went up the wing and Hunter Clark pinched it from McCarthy’s hands and then lost control. If he’d held onto it he had Long and Ross ready inside to turn and go for the repeat 50 entry. But instead, Neale broke the Windhager shackles and swept through, and his long ball sat up for the running Daniher. Two goals the margin.

We had two more easy opportunities to get within a kick with more than eight minutes and then more than seven minutes of play remaining. Ross worked to the 50 and Sinclair took a great mark with heat oncoming, and kicked to Windhager, rather than the slightly more central option of Sharman, in the pocket.

His kick went to the right.

Membrey had another turn from a kind angle a minute later after Hill took the advantage when Mitchito caught Harris Andrews holding the ball.

He missed to the left.

The Lions fans at the away end were now taunting the home team. They were delighted. They had nothing to be afraid of. Our best and our spearheads and our leaders weren’t going to get it done. There would be no Max King quarter. No Snags quarter. Strangely, there was a Mason Wood quarter, but Mason Wood’s best game in years – possibly his best game ever – wasn’t going to be enough (he deserved to have a match-winning performance). King and Membrey et al. opened up the door for Rayner to seal the game with a mark on the lead and a snap around the corner from the forward pocket with four and a half minutes to go. We now have high-definition images and footage of Cam Rayner coming into his own against the Saints, ending their season, and telling the St Kilda home crowd to keep quiet.

🤫 pic.twitter.com/Ao2nm47NKP

— Brisbane Lions (@brisbanelions) August 12, 2022

***

The inside 50 count in the final quarter was 18 to seven. That’s 18 to the Saints, mind you, and seven for the Lions, who kicked 4.1 from those entries. We kicked 0.5.

The time for live ladders and permutations and what ifs – “what ifs” of the ladder predictor type – was now over. The rest of the weekend was about letting the results roll. Watching the Dogs and Blues’ own sliding doors moments that barely affected our own fortunes; really it was about keeping an eye on the inevitable Richmond result that relayed our season is officially over (and no, relying on the Bulldogs to lose as well as Carlton losing and beating the Swans while making up 142 points to reel back the Blues on percentage this weekend doesn’t count). Now it’s time for the retrospective “what ifs”. Six months of wondering. What if Max kicked just one of those goals? What if Tim Membrey did? (It’s harder to get as upset about Windhager’s.) We have plenty of time to get excited about Mitchito and Marcus in the coming years if the club doesn’t fuck up their development like it has so many others. We’ve got a season to mourn for now. Windhager might have kept Neale to just 16 touches but Neale looked as happy as every other one of his teammates on the siren.

How reductive can we be in the fall-out of this? Our method wasn’t excellent (certainly not for four quarters) but it feels like this week’s culprit out of the “kickers” and the “catchers” was the catchers – in particular, the catchers’ kicking. How much do you lay the blame on Max King for the result? Or, as the harsher comments would suggest, for us missing the finals? We were still relying on other results either way. I’m wary that Max is a young guy under a lot of pressure (he is also recompensed handsomely and has all the access in the world to psychological help at any time). I’m also wary that while Ratten said some of the right things in the post-match press conference (“I want to go to war with Max”); he also said “He won’t be seeing anybody outside the club, he doesn’t need to. We’ve got people with the skillset to keep working there.” Well, fucking do we? We have a player who should be a generational talent who looks defeated just by the prospect of having a shot on goal; who’s otherwise been manhandled by multiple opponents and has Sherrins bombed on top of his head by teammates that for a lot of the season have been unsure what they’re doing with the footy. Max almost single-handedly guided us to a few wins this year (including kicking 6.0), but when he drops his head he drops his fucking head and he doesn’t have the technique to hold him up. He kicked 1.5 against the Cats last year in another performance that cost us a game that might have changed the trajectory of the season, we got away with his 1.7 against the Giants this year, not so much with his 2.2 with a huge miss in the last quarter from close range against the Power in another game we can point to that might have cost us a finals spot; there was 2.5 against the Hawks, and now 0.5 in another important game. By Sunday, the Herald Sun was reporting the club was actually open to outside help. Maybe Ratten doesn’t know better, maybe Jarryd Roughead doesn’t, maybe Andrew Bassat doesn’t, but maybe Max does and maybe Matthew Lloyd does. Emma declared after the game, “now he is a deflated boy with a large moustache”.

But this is all part of a season ending in a hot-headed rush of watching shots at goal pissed away with a game there for the taking. Max has been the most inaccurate of the top handful of goal kickers in the competition over the past three years, Joey highlighted on First Crack. But really, our problems since the bye have run much deeper than Max. We’re not 3-7 since the bye because of Max’s accuracy or inaccuracy. The gap between his best and worst is emblematic of the gap between the best and worst of this team, a team – perhaps by design – that even in the brighter times of early 2022 relied too much on bursts of good footy. We’re back to being confounded by the relationship between kickers and catchers. We’re back to being outworked, back to being pushed off the ball, back to looking a little disinterested. We’re back outside the eight. Those great wins throughout the season – Freo in Perth, storming over Richmond, a day out on the MCG in the April sunshine against Hawthorn, a fighting victory over the Giants, Paddy Ryder (in a St Kilda jumper) leading us to a win over the Cats, charging home over the Crows in Adelaide; a wonderful undermanned win against the Blues on a Friday night – none of those games matter anymore.

Maybe we did reach the “No D-Mac, no St Kilda timeline” after all.

One week to go.